alpha mask imported texture file
 

I have imported a .tiff file. It was a font character created in Illustrator and exported as .eps. It was then opened in Photoshop and, selected and had a mask applied to it. It was then saved as a .tiff file, placed in the 'source images' project folder and imported into Maya using the attributes editor/bump map/file option. It was assigned to a nurbs plane ok, but the alpha channel has not seemed to have worked. The font character is visible but so is the surrounding nurbes plane when rendered. I have 'alpha channel mask' switched on in my render globals. I think i may have gone wrong somewhere in the photoshop mask secion of the process. I went back to photoshop and inversed the mask selection but this was no help.

Can anyone suggest something, please.

thank you

I know I have had to manually map the transparency to the file, so maybe try that. If you don't see anything mapped when you open up the attributes editor for the shader, that's your problem. You might also have to mess around with the alpha slider thingy. (can't remember what it's called) but it's somewhere in the attributes editor for the mapped texture file for transparency.

If you are working with Maya and you want to have the Alpha channel work without any problems, it is usually a good idea to save the file as a Targa(*.tga).

Targa stores the Alpha channel Data better for some reason. Even an IFF doesn't work the same!

Just see if this solves your problem.